John Stoehr: Evangelicals and the Orange Menace

Has it ever struck you as odd how white evangelicals in this country consistently and enthusiastically back a president with a verifiable history of strikingly lewd behavior? From multiple divorces to bragging about grabbing women by the genitals, from public affairs with porn stars to the suggestion that he’d like to date his own daughter, the man’s moral compass swings wildly away from due North. The evangelical right is historically famous for linking personal morality with fitness to govern. They attacked Bill Clinton unmercifully, for example, for his extra-marital concerns in the 1990s. But when it comes to Donald Trump, white evangelicals seem willing to reconsider this linkage, supporting him in record numbers. What’s behind this mysterious hypocrisy? This week on Sea Change Radio we speak with Editorial Board Founder and Publisher John Stoehr, a journalist who spent his childhood among white fundamentalist Christians. He applies his insights and posits that an authoritarian cosmology and nihilism about the environment enable white evangelical Christians to abandon the Golden Rule in favor of the Orange Menace.